


One Content, One Sick In Part

by Go0se



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Attempted Murder, Backstory, Friendship, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Nott The Brave's A+ Self-Esteem, Past Relationship(s), Past Violence, Secret Children, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 16:31:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16559222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Go0se/pseuds/Go0se
Summary: After she picks 'truth' in a game around the campfire, Nott tells her friends why she's afraid of water.





	One Content, One Sick In Part

**Author's Note:**

> This idea came from a suspicion I have about Nott's backstory, and with all of them being around water so much lately, yesterday I went into a fugue state and finally wrote the damn thing. My first posted fic in the fandom, and it's..... this. I'm sorry and thank you for reading and I'm sorry. \o/  
> (Also, I'm posting this on a Thursday before episode 41 is going to happen. May the dice gods have mercy on all of us in about eight hours.) 
> 
> Title is from ['Goblin Market',](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-market) by Christina Rossetti. (Warning about the poem: mentions sexual assault and violence, and weirdly sexual throughout.)
> 
> Further warnings about the fic: attempted drowning, child endangerment (to say the least), and canon-typical violence towards Nott in particular. Please mind your step.  
> \--

As the question set in, Nott’s ears lowered until they were pinned back against her head like a sad rabbit. “Well, it’s an awful story,” she said, her warbling, scratchy voice softer than usual. She took a drink from her everflowing flask compulsively.

“I’m not saying you _have_ to tell us anything, y’know,” Beau said, after a moment. She was sitting on her heels with her staff in front of her on the ground, within easy reach of picking up and swinging at an enemy or poking at the fire, whichever came first. “Just that that's how the game goes."

“If you say ‘black cat’ in truth or dare you can pass the turn on to the next person,” Jester added. "If you want to."

Nott considered for a moment, then shook her head. She set her flask down safely in her lap. “No, it’s alright,” she said. “So many of you have trusted me with your stories. It’s really only fair.” The young goblin woman started picking at the buttons she'd been arranging in front of her before her turn. “I'm afraid of water because... the short of it is that... well, when I was with my old clan they tried to drown me with—with my daughter, shortly after I gave birth to her.”

Stunned silence from all around the campfire. Jester stifled a gasp.  
After a moment, from Nott’s left, Caduceus gave a slow exhale. It was remarkably cow-like and expressive at the same time; the kind of breath that implied _well, I wasn’t sure before, but now that I am, it is how it is; but it still sucks_.

Nott kept her gaze on the firelight reflecting on her shiny collection. She cleared her throat with some more whiskey and continued. “I never liked water much before that, either. My clan didn’t really care about bathing or grooming ourselves— even less than we do-- and rain was just a little bit more shitty than other weather, because it meant that whatever scrap of cloth you found and the mud you slept on for your bed, both of them were damp at best and just really gross slurry at worst. When they tried to get me to cook I’d always burn myself trying to make the soups, and seeing my reflection is... And I didn’t like it when I was the torturer’s assistant for obvious reasons. But the, you know, needle that broke the horses’ back was the attempted murder. And infanticide. So. That was that.” 

 

“Wait, if you have a kid, then who was--” Jester hushed herself, blinking rapidly and covering her own mouth with both hands. After a moment she lowered them. “I mean. Nott, did--”

“ _Nein._ ” Caleb spoke up sharply. He sat across the fire from Nott (so they could watch behind each other’s backs), sitting up stick-straight with his arms crossed stiffly over his chest.  “She doesn’t have to talk about any of that if she doesn’t want to.” He spoke not looking at her, or anyone else; staring slightly to the left of the campfire. Frumpkin had curled tightly around his shoulders like a living, purring scarf, although the cat’s usual comforting powers didn’t seem to have much effect.

The defensiveness and care in his voice warmed Nott’s heart even as it quaked. She looked away, unable to face the tearful cleric or her own boy. “No, Caleb, it’s alright. Thank you.  
"Jester, I... just, well… I  may not have been entirely telling the truth before. About Yeza.” Little Riri had already spilled those particular beans, anyway; it was okay. Best get it over with now. Nott scratched at her bandages and then breathed in, ears twitching flat against her head. “He _was_ my friend and he did teach me all those things-- Halfling language, bits of alchemy, and we were kind to each other. And one night I got real good and drunk, got him out, and we ran in different directions. That all did happen.  But… I didn’t just run off from my clan that same night. I was too scared. I had never left out on my own before, and everything’s just, none of you get it, it’s so very _big._ And once the alcohol wore off I had no idea where I was going, and I’d gotten hungry, and there were all these weird sounds in the forest, and I couldn’t see as far as it seemed like I could normally--”

“You panicked,” Beau intoned, her face serious and without judgement.

Nott’s skin got slightly greener. She nodded. “I panicked,” she agreed, more quietly. “So I just went back to them all. At least I knew what it’d be like, there, you know? And sure, they beat me up pretty badly for the few weeks after that, but it wasn’t anything I wasn’t used to.”

 

The camp had gotten oppressively quiet again. Nott stopped to clear her throat once more, the burn of the liquor fortifying what little courage she had. “And I did also _want_ to stay, even outside of all that. If I did I would still be close enough to the village, the little halfling village close by my clan's territory, to visit sometimes. Only by myself. I never led the others there, and I _never_ would have. Just alone. Partly it was to scratch the itch, but mostly I went to see Yeza. He was still my friend, after everything. His kindness meant a lot to me." She smiled a wobbly little smile at the ground.

"He had a little shop-- a lab, really-- just in the middle part of the town, it was easy enough to get to at night without anyone seeing me. He kept teaching me writing and alchemy and things. I’d teach him terrible jokes. And we, I mean. Eventually, you know.” She raised her hand and made little snipping motions. "It wasn’t like I didn’t know what could happen, I just didn’t think about it. I didn't want to. It was fun. I had barely ever had fun, before. And just not being with _them,_ too-- being with him, just having someone else to go to sometimes-- it made the rest of the times easier. Livable.”

 

“So you _did_ love him?” Jester asked after a moment, her beautiful voice gentle but curious. Nott chanced a look up at her. The tiefling was holding her tufted tail in front of her face with both hands like a security blanket, eyes big and misty.

Nott’s voice felt a little fragile in her throat. “I really don’t know,” she replied. “I wasn’t lying about that part before. He deserves way better than me, anyway.”

  
Looking back at the ground, she continued. “But it’s not because he wasn’t a nice man. He was. He actually, um. When I realized, you know, what had happened, I told him. I didn’t know what else to do, really. And at first he offered me a potion, he didn’t have it onhand but he said he knew how to make it, that would reverse the whole thing. When I said no, he offered me the cot in his room-- to stay and share his house with him. 

"I knew I couldn’t do that either. The clan would eat him alive and that's not an exaggeration. None of my other fellow gobbies cared about _me,_ you understand, but they cared about the idea of--” She waved her hands around. “Of _us._ We died all the time, but as long as some of us survived, it was like we’d won anyway. If a goblin got captured, the whole tribe would descend on the place who’d captured them. Not to save them, a lot of goblins actually died on their own rescue mission, but the principal of it was that only goblins were allowed to kill each other.  
I couldn’t put him in danger like that.”

“But  _you_ were in danger,” Caleb said. He was still sitting like a soldier, with one hand pressed to his mouth. “You were--” He grimaced and stopped himself.

Nott shook her head. “You're right, as always, Caleb. It couldn’t be helped, though. I’m a goblin, I’ll always be in danger of someone, whether it’s my own kind or something else. And most of the time they’re right to be attacking us. It doesn’t matter _where_ I am.”

 

“You said your daughter,” Caduceus pointed out, his rumbly voice calm. “So you did have the child?”

"Yes." Nott took another swig. “Yes, I did. It was in the middle of spring. It was easy to hide it under all the layers in winter, so I didn't worry much about anyone in the clan finding out at least. I, um. I knew more or less what to expect. Honestly, it didn’t hurt as bad compared to some of the others things that’d happened to me-- but I was so scared. I had to run off by myself to a cave nearby where we’d trooped up for the night, and I barely avoided this bear that was sleeping in it. I had to shoot it in the butt to scare it out. It was a little funny.”

“And you didn’t have anyone with you?” Caduceus’ long face crinkled with concern. “That’s not very safe.”

“It really wasn't,” Nott agreed. “But, no. Goblins don’t really keep midwives or anything. When we died, we just… died. No one really paid attention much unless it was too many at once, or the leader of the clan or somebody else important. And I wasn't important." 

"So I snuck out to that cave, and just laid out my little mildewy bedroll on the floor and... and had a baby on it, eventually. And then, well. When she was born, I could see that she wasn't exactly normal for a goblin. She barely looked like a goblin at all, actually-- she was all red and squishy, but as we laid there for a while, she cooled down and her skin got paler. And she had all five fingers, no teeth yet, not really any claws to speak of-- her eyes were a little on the gold side, but that was all. She just looked like a little, healthy, baby halfling." Nott smiled at the dirt again. She could feel her eyes start to fill up. Maybe she could blame that on the whiskey. "I knew she couldn’t stay in the clan-- they _hate_ half-goblins, even more than they hated me." 

"At first I thought I could just sneak her out, but I was so tired, I didn't really think it through. I knew had to leave the cave eventually, so I just wrapped her in a piece of blanket and carried her out.   
"But we ran into some of the others as soon as we'd got out into the forest-- they'd known I had to leave the cave eventually, too. Someone had finally noticed I was gone and waited around to see what I was up to. They didn't really trust me at all. Of course they saw her right away, and I tried to stop them, but, it was barely even a fight. I was pathetic.  
"And then... there was a river, nearby, where we got all the water for our stewpots. So they just tied my feet and threw us both in." Her hands were shaking a little, claws scratching her flask with thin high-pitched noises.

"We got away. That's the important thing. The river didn't have much of a current, it was just thawed enough that there was room for us to swim away from the shore that the clan was on, it-- we both got away." She took a good, long drink. 

 

"Um. When I got us out of the river, as quick as I could, I brought her into the village. To Yeza. I knew she'd be well taken care of there-- he had a whole group of relatives he'd told me about all the time, and the village was good. Yeza convinced me to stay there for the rest of that day, just to try and get some more rest, so I did. But I knew he'd ask me to be there for longer, even though I was dangerous to him-- so I just left in the middle of the night." Nott's ears drooped.  "I haven't… really seen her again."

"I always miss her. And Yeza, too. But I can't go back there, it wouldn't be safe for any of us. No one knows she's half-goblin, they won't treat her any different as long as they don't put me and her together. It’s better for her not to be seen with me at all,” Nott finished finally, her voice starting to crack.

 

A moment of only cricket songs passed.

 

"... the fuck, Nott," Beau said conversationally after a second of silence. "That's way fucked up." 

 Nott laughed thinly, wiping her eyes with her dirty bandages. "I know, right?"

Jester stood up and gathered her skirts to one side. “Nott, if it is okay, I’m going to hug you now."  
At Nott’s surprised nod, she stepped around the fire and squeezed her arms around the goblin woman.  
Jester was strong and comforting and smelled like candied sugar on a warm summer’s day, fresh from someone else’s plate. Nott hugged her back as tightly as she could. "I send her gifts whenever I can," Nott said into her friend's shoulder. "Just, you know, anything she might need. Little trinkets. In case she turns out to like them as much as I do." She sniffed, unsubtlely wiping her eyes on Jester's coat.

"I'm sure your daughter appreciates that," Fjord said from the other side of the circle, more gently than he usually spoke.

"Trinkets are nice," Caduceus agreed.

"Yeah," Beau said. "That's more care than a lot of parents give."

“Nott, we're going to help you go back to your family,” Jester promised when she finally pulled back. Her face was set determinedly. “I swear to the Traveler, okay? He loves tricks and brave things, so He definitely loves you, and He'll help us find your little girl so you can see her again as soon as we go anywhere near your old home.”

"... okay. Thank you Jessie. That really, it does mean a lot."

Jester pressed her face to the side of Nott's forehead, careful of her horns. " _Any_ time."

 

“Did you give her a name, Nott?” Fjord asked after Jester had put her on the ground again. “Pardon if that's rude, but you haven't said.”

Nott resettled on her perch and nodded. "I did. Um. I don't know if the halflings renamed her or not, but in my head I always called her Frieda." Her voice turned a little warmer and softer. “Frieda Go.”

"Like 'free to go'," Caleb observed quietly. 

Nott sent him a sad smile. "Exactly."

She hoped her daughter would be, one day. And herself too.

  
  
-

**Author's Note:**

>  _*Update Not(t)e! added on Jan. 21st 2019, **Spoilers For Episode 48**_  
>  -
> 
>  
> 
> -  
> ... so.  
> Putting aside the Mountains of curiousity, theorizing, panic, horrendous nervousness in general and heartbreak for Nott in particular, although yes absolutely all of those, and an increasingly urgent Is It Thursday Yet _Now_ :  
> 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [truth or dare?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18784960) by [theres-no-comma (littleboxes)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleboxes/pseuds/theres-no-comma)




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